Spot Gold
$ 1,307.02
$ -44.2 (-3.27%)
Spot Silver
$ 20.27
$ -1.05 (-4.92%)
I haven't seen a rant like this on national television for quite some time. The only thing that comes close was Howard Beale in his epic rant in the movie "Network". This is a must listen before you watch this interview with Jon Hilsenrath that Santelli has shortly afterwards.
This Zero Hedge piece from yesterday is courtesy of West Virginia reader Elliot Simon.
Gross emphasized the importance of the low inflation readings we've been getting out of the economy.
I think the Chairman is almost deathly afraid and we have witnessed in speeches going back five or 10 years on the part of the chairman in terms of the helicopter speech and the reference not only to the depression but to the lost decades in Japan. I think he is deathly afraid of deflation. As we meander back and forth around the 1% level, I would suggest that the chairman to the extent that he perhaps has a limited time left in terms of being the Chairman, that he would guide the committee towards not only an unemployment rate which has been emphasized in terms of the Q&A but also towards a higher inflation target, which is really a target.
It's not something in terms of a cap, but the inflation target of 2% and for the next year or two, 2.5% has been specifically delineated in terms of that. It's a target. Those who think it is a cap and we are 1% below the cap and therefore the Fed doesn't care about it, I think the chairman told us the Fed does care about it and the closer we get to 2%, the better as far as he's concerned.
In other words, this low inflation we're getting is not a good thing, and we should think of the Fed's 2.5% inflation threshold as a "target," not a "cap."
The transcription of the Bloomberg interview is posted in this businessinsider.com item from yesterday...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank may start reducing bond purchases later this year and end them in mid-2014 if the economy continues to improve as the central bank forecasts.
“If the incoming data are broadly consistent with this forecast, the committee currently anticipates that it would be appropriate to moderate the pace of purchases later this year,” Bernanke said today in a press conference in Washington. “If the subsequent data remain broadly aligned with our current expectations for the economy, we will continue to reduce the pace of purchases in measured steps through the first half of next year, ending purchases around mid-year.”
Bernanke spoke after the Federal Open Market Committee said today it would maintain the $85 billion pace of monthly asset purchases and that it sees the “downside risks to the outlook for the economy and the labor market as having diminished since the fall.” The FOMC (TREFQE2) repeated that it’s prepared to increase or reduce the pace of purchases depending on the outlook for the job market and inflation.
Basically nothing is going to change until the Fed says they're going to. It's business as usual. This Bloomberg story is courtesy of U.A.E. reader Laurent-Patrick Gally.
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said the central bank is considering further non-standard monetary policy tools and will deploy them if circumstances warrant.
“We will look with an open mind at these measures that are especially effective in our institutional setup and that fall within our mandate,” Draghi said today in a speech in Jerusalem. “Some of those measures may have unintended consequences. This does not mean that they should not be used, but it does mean that we need to be aware of those consequences and manage them appropriately.”
Draghi has in recent months held out the possibility of charging lenders to hold cash at the Frankfurt-based central bank by introducing a negative deposit rate. The rate has been at zero since July. That’s one of a range of tools, including further long-term lending operations and adjusting collateral requirements, that the ECB is mulling as the 17-member euro area remains stuck in its longest-ever recession.
This Bloomberg article was posted on their website in the wee hours of Tuesday morning...and I found it yesterday's edition of the King Report.
Less than three months have passed since the European Union, together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), assembled a €10 billion ($13.4 billion) bailout package for Cyprus to prevent the country's banking system from collapsing. But Nicosia, according to reports in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, already finds itself in need of additional help.
In a letter sent to euro-zone leaders last week, and obtained by both business dailies on Tuesday, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades says that the bailout package, which included the restructuring of the country's two largest banks, was "implemented without careful preparation" and that it has damaged the island nation's economy to a greater degree than expected.
"The economy is driven into a deep recession, leading to a further rise in unemployment and making fiscal consolidation all the more difficult," Anastasiades wrote, according to a passage quoted by the Financial Times. "I urge you to review the possibilities in order to determine a viable prospect for Cyprus and its people."
This news item appeared on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens.
China’s one-year interest-rate swap jumped the most since August 2011 as the central bank refrained from adding cash to the financial system amid concern housing costs are climbing too fast.
New home prices rose in 69 of the 70 cities tracked by the government in May, official data showed today, signaling the latest policy measures meant to slow demand failed. The People’s Bank of China didn’t auction repurchase contracts or reverse-repurchase agreements today, according to a statement on its website.
“The PBOC has continued to surprise with its refusal to inject liquidity through open-market operations despite extremely high money-market rates,” Dariusz Kowalczyk, a strategist in Hong Kong at Credit Agricole CIB, wrote in a report today. The housing report is “a negative for sentiment as this will make it more difficult for the government to stimulate the economy,” he said.
This is another Bloomberg story that was posted on their website in the wee hours of Thursday morning MDT...and I thank Roy Stephens for another contribution to today's column.
It seems liquidity (or counterparty mistrust) is beginning to reach extreme levels in China as the nation's banking system is now quoting overnight repo transactions at 25%. The explosion in funding costs echoes the collapse in trust (and surge in TED spread) among US banks in the run-up to the Lehman bankruptcy. MSCI Asia-Pac stocks are down over 3% with China's Shanghai Composite -2.5% at seven-month lows.
This absolute must read Zero Hedge story from just before midnight EDT last night was sent to me by U.A.E. reader Laurent-Patrick Gally after I'd filed this morning's column...but I was able to slide it in. The charts alone are worth the trip.
“The HSBC China Flash Manufacturing PMI dropped to a nine-month low of 48.3 in June, following on the sequential reduction in both production and demand, wrote HSBC's Hongbin Qu in a press release.
"Manufacturing sectors are weighed down by deteriorating external demand, moderating domestic demand and rising destocking pressures. Beijing prefers to use reforms rather than stimulus to sustain growth. While reforms can boost long-term growth prospects, they will have a limited impact in the short term. As such we expect slightly weaker growth in 2Q.”
An expansion in the inventory of finished goods, albeit at a slower rate, is also worrisome as China continues to cope with an excess capacity problem.
This businessinsider.com news item was posted on their Internet site late yesterday evening...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column.
Are Shinzo Abe’s days as Japan’s prime minister numbered?
Many will dismiss this question as premature or naive -- perhaps both. The architect of “Abenomics” boasts a higher approval rating than any of the eight previous Japanese prime ministers. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party is heading to a big victory in next month’s upper-house election. Supporters are convinced he will use that mandate to end Japan’s 20-year deflationary funk with boldness, creativity and panache.
There’s just one problem with their thesis: The batteries that have powered support for Abe’s revival plan -- surging stocks -- are running out. Given how quickly the Japanese electorate tends to sour on politicians, the prime minister and his most ardent fans should be worried.
Six months into Abe’s shock-therapy experiment of massive monetary and fiscal stimulus as well as sweeping structural reforms, Japan faces record trade deficits, extreme volatility in the bond market and rising energy and food costs as a weaker yen makes imports more expensive. The capital-spending and household-wage increases that are needed to halt deflation have yet to materialize.
This op-ed piece by William Pesek was posted on the Bloomberg website Monday afternoon MDT...and it's another story I found tucked away in yesterday's edition of the King Report.
1. Robert Fitzwilson: "Fed to Dump Its Balance Sheet Onto Unsuspecting Public". 2. Michael Pento: "Fed in Complete Disarray and Investors Must Brace Themselves". 3. James Turk: "Financial System Now Headed Into a Massive Hurricane". The audio interview is with Rob Arnott.
Commodity letter writer Dennis Gartman acknowledges that the gold market well may be manipulated by governments but asserts that he doesn't care. He also completely misconstrues GATA's position and urges us to give up on the manipulation issue.
Gartman writes:
"Concerning gold, we've angered the 'bugs' once again by selling gold against purchases of crude oil and equities, fearing that gold looked 'vulnerable' and noting that the gold/crude oil ratio looked even more so. We are amused and bemused by the vehemence and vitriol that the 'bugs' bring forth when we turn even modestly bearish of gold, and in this instance we are bearish of gold 'relative' to crude and equities, not relative to the U.S. dollar -- and that is a major distinction.
"Do we believe that gold is manipulated by the governments, or, more importantly, do we even care? We've no doubt but that the governments of the G-7 'act' at times in the gold market, just as we've no doubt that they 'act' at times in the equity futures markets. That bothers us not a whit for they are simply makers of price and our duty is to discern trends and to trade according to those trends.
GATA's secretary treasurer Chris Powell takes Gartman to task in this commentary posted on the gata.org Internet site yesterday...and it's worth reading.
My only hiccup with Gartman is that “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” On one hand Gartman likes to mock “gold bugs” and the like. Yet when he’s around them (and I’ve been at conferences where he has been with them in the same room), he plays up to their cause. Here I would almost rather deal with Nadler. (Almost.)
I agree with the comment by GATA’s Chris Powell’s that Gartman at least has gone from years of denying manipulation to saying it’s possible but doesn’t really matter. The supposed experts who say it’s foolish to claim gold market manipulation, along with the financial journalists who quote them, are truly fools because nowadays hardly a week goes by without a disclosure of market manipulation somewhere. Are we really to think that market manipulation stops at the door of the COMEX? Those who think so are the biggest fools.
It’s a sad commentary on the financial world when an authority (who I assume puts his pants on like the rest of us, one leg at a time) concedes that markets may be rigged but we should just accept it and try to profit from it.
The rest of Peter's commentary was posted on his website yesterday and it, too, is worthy of your time.
If [Indian Finance Minister P.] Chidambaram does genuinely believe that gold is like any other metal and that Indian import of gold is the main problem confronting the economy, and stopping this import is the solution to all our ills, the solution is fairly straight-forward.
The RBI has an estimated 550 tonnes of gold in its reserves. So instead of importing gold to meet the needs of citizens for the rest of the year, the RBI can sell the gold it is holding in its reserves to citizens. With the rupees raised, it can do an even better job of suppressing interest rates by buying government bonds. Even more attractive is the fact that there is no change in its balance-sheet, as it will be substituting one asset class with another. And going by Chidambaram’s advice, the RBI is substituting a dumb non-productive metal with a government bond that would help the government do whatever it wants to do.
In doing so, citizens would get the gold they want, Chidambaram would get a lower CAD and the credit for the accompanying economic miracles, and the RBI can achieve lower interest rates. It’s a win-win situation. What more can we all ask for?
An excellent question indeed! This story was sent to my be reader "Shanmuganathan N"...and was featured on the firstpost.com Internet site yesterday...and is well worth reading.
Demand for silver jewellery and coins has dropped by almost 40% in the last one month although prices have fallen to 43,000 per kg from 55,000 per kg in June last year.
The metal has also lost its flavour as an investment product and the trade says this bearish trend will not be over soon. Suresh Hundia, a Mumbai-based bullion dealer, said: "There is no demand for silver in the market now. The industry can expect some demand only in August. There is a huge stock of silver with traders now. They will first have to offload this and then place fresh orders."
Investors who bought the metal when it soared to 60,000 - 70,000 per kg are waiting to offload it if prices go up although analysts say there is no positive trigger in the near term. Two years ago, prices shot up to 75,000 per kg. Industrial demand for silver has remained muted due to a slowdown in the growth of the electronic industry, the major user of the metal.
This story, filed from Kolkata, was posted on the Economic Times of India website yesterday morning IST...and I thank Nitin Agrawal for bringing it to our attention. It's certainly worth skimming.
Right after the prices of gold and silver nosedived in mid April, demand for bullion-priced physical coins and bars soared. Through the end of May, my company’s sales of ounces of physical gold and silver exceeded our units sold in the first five months of 2011, the year of this company’s highest dollar value of sales.
In some instances, such as with U.S. silver American Eagles and Canadian silver Maple Leaves, delays not only became long, but delivery times because uncertain. In these instances, wholesalers stopped taking orders on such products, which resulted in retailers following suit.
For a time, the U.S. Mint suspended sales of the tenth-ounce gold American Eagles. Though the Mint is selling them again, supply still has not caught up with demand. This supply problem has also resulted in higher than normal premiums for the quarter-ounce gold American Eagle, British sovereign, and French and Swiss 20 francs.
However, if you are still looking to acquire physical gold, you can now usually get delivery within two weeks after payment and pay close to the premiums at which physical gold sold when the spot prices were a few hundred dollars higher.
As for bullion-priced silver products, most products are available for delivery within two weeks of payment. The slowest deliveries right now are for the 100-ounce ingots and the Canadian silver Maple Leaves. But, even there, you should be able to get delivery within three to four weeks.
I fully concur with what Patrick Heller has to say in his commentary posted over at the numismaster.com Internet site yesterday...as the same situation now exists at the bullion store here in Edmonton. We are having little, if any, supply problems...and most premiums are now at, or near, normal. I consider this essay to be a must read...and I thank Elliot Simon for sending it our way.
There are gold bears, gold bulls, and gold bugs. And then there's Ron Paul.
The former congressman and presidential candidate is known for favoring gold, and he still believes it will go higher. How much higher?
"Eventually, if we're not carefully, it will go to infinity, because the dollar will collapse totally," Paul said on CNBC.com's "Futures Now."
A gold price of "infinity" might be hard to conceptualize, but Paul's point is actually quite simple.
This very short 1:18 minute CNBC video clip from early Tuesday afternoon with Ron Paul is a must watch...and if you don't want to be bothered with that, there's a transcript posted below it. I thank Elliot Simon for today's last story.
We no longer have a free market. The world's financial asset prices have become a plaything of central banks and the sovereign wealth funds of a few emerging powers.
Julian Callow from Barclays says they are buying $1.8 trillion worth of AAA or safe-haven bonds each year from an available pool of $2 trillion. Nothing like this has been seen before in modern times, if ever.
The Fed, the ECB, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, et al., own $10 trillion in bonds. China, the petro-powers, et al., own another $10 trillion. Between them they have locked up $20 trillion, equal to roughly 25 percent of global GDP. They are the market. That is why Fed taper talk has become so neuralgic and why we all watch Chinese regulators for every clue on policy.
We will find out today whether Ben Bernanke is ready to blink after the market ructions of the last three weeks, sobered by the cascading upsets across the BRICs and mini-BRICs; or whether he will stay the course with Fed tapering sooner rather than later.
"We no longer have a free market." That sounds like Chris Powell's quote..."There are no markets anymore...only interventions." This AE-S blog, which I found in a GATA release, was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site yesterday...and it's worth reading.
On Monday night, President Obama said in an interview, "Well, I think Ben Bernanke's done an outstanding job. Ben Bernanke's a little bit like Bob Mueller, the head of the FBI - where he's already stayed a lot longer than he wanted or he was supposed to."
That raised some eyebrows and really turned up the volume on the conversation today regarding potential successors to replace Bernanke when his term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve expires in January.
In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday afternoon, former Fed Governor Larry Meyer said Obama "basically fired Ben Bernanke on the spot."
This story from very early yesterday evening was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site...and it's Roy Stephens first offering in today's column.
A gauge of consumer prices excluding food and energy that is watched by the Fed rose 1.1 percent in the year through April, matching the smallest gain since records started in 1960. With inflation below the Fed’s 2 percent long-run goal and the jobless rate at 7.6 percent, the Fed is falling short of its mandate to ensure stable prices and maximum employment.
Policy makers wrapping up a meeting today will probably pledge to plow ahead with record bond buying, setting aside for now concern that growth in the Fed’s $3.41 trillion in assets may stoke long-term inflation expectations or disrupt market functioning, said Drew Matus, a former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“Why would they possibly rush to a taper now?” said Matus, an economist at UBS AG in Stamford, Connecticut. “Unemployment is still nowhere near what they consider to be the natural rate, and the inflation number is too low.”
This Bloomberg story was posted on their website early this morning...and I thank U.A.E. reader Laurent-Patrick Gally for sending it our way just before I hit the 'send' button on today's column.
Kyle Bass covers three critical topics in this excellent in-depth interview before turning to a very wide-ranging and interesting Q&A session. The topics he focuses on are Central bank expansion (with a mind-numbing array of awe-full numbers to explain just where the $10 trillion of freshly created money has gone), Japan's near-term outlook, and most importantly since, as he notes, "we are investing in things that are propped up and somewhat made up," the psychology of negative outcomes. The latter, Bass explains, is one of the most frequently discussed topics at his firm, as he points out that "denial" is extremely popular in the financial markets.
Simply put, Bass explains, we do not want to admit that there is this serious (potentially perilous) outcome that disallows the world to continue on the way it has, and that is why so many people, whether self-preserving or self-dealing, miss all the warning signs and get this wrong - "it's really important to understand that people do not want to come to the [quantitatively correct but potentially catastrophic] conclusion; and that's why things are priced the way they are in the marketplace."
The link to the video is embedded in this Zero Hedge piece from yesterday. Kyle's talk lasts about 30 minutes...and then the Q&A starts immediately after. This is an absolute must watch...and if I had to pick just one story for you to bury yourself in today...this would be the one. I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for bringing it to my attention...and now to yours.
Brazil is currently gripped by its largest protests in 20 years — about 200,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Brazil's biggest cities on Monday — driven by public frustration over shoddy public services, police brutality, economic instability, and government corruption.
The turmoil, which has been simmering for months, arises as the country hosts the Confederations Cup soccer tournament (i.e. the preliminary for next year's World Cup) and prepares for a visit from the pope next month.
Images being shared on social media show police beating unarmed protesters with batons, in addition to dispersing crowds with rubber bullets and tear gas, and have only caused the protests to expand.
This news item was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site late yesterday morning EDT...and it's another item courtesy of Roy Stephens.
The American banker couldn't even pronounce the name of his German client when he appeared for the interview on the morning of Sept. 20, 2012: Kommunale Wasserwerke Leipzig, quite a tongue twister for a Wall Street man. But it wouldn't make much difference, he reasoned, because hardly anyone in America was likely to have heard of it before.
By the afternoon of the next day, after undergoing 12 hours of questioning by the American financial regulatory agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), John Simon knew he was mistaken. SEC enforcement division lawyer Andrew H. Feller was in fact very well informed, after having read through emails and call logs, and he knew whom Simon had met in New York, London and South Africa. The SEC attorney could even pronounce the name of the city of Leipzig's water utility relatively well.
Feller had spent two years investigating the methods Simon had used to develop risky deals involving water treatment plants in the eastern German state of Saxony for UBS, a major Swiss bank. In the end, Leipzig faced potential losses of €300 million ($400 million), joining the ranks of many German municipalities that had lost vast sums of money in complex Wall Street deals.
Just another case of Wall Street ripping the face off their clients. This story appeared on the German website spiegel.de early yesterday evening Europe time...and it's another contribution to today's column from Roy Stephens.
Swiss lawmakers dealt a serious blow Tuesday to a plan that could enable the country's banks to avoid the threat of prosecution in the U.S. by collectively coming clean about their dealings with suspected American tax evaders.
The lower house of Parliament voted 126-67 against even considering the plan, which would allow banks to skirt Switzerland's banking secrecy law and hand information to U.S. authorities about the undeclared holdings of their American clients, as well as the bank employees who assisted those clients.
The vote sends the measure back to the upper house, which had approved it last week, for further debate and another show of hands as early as Wednesday. A reversal there would mean the legislation's demise—and could lead to severe legal complications for Swiss banks in U.S. courts. Approval would send it back to the lower house.
This article, filed from Zurich, was posted on the barrons.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Casey Research's own Dennis Miller for sharing it with us.
George Osborne is facing pressure to radically overhaul Britain's banks by introducing a new law to jail bankers for "reckless misconduct" and force bankers to wait up to 10 years to receive their bonuses.
The proposals, among the key measures recommended in a major report by the parliamentary commission on banking standards, also include a call on him to consider breaking up the Royal Bank of Scotland. They come ahead of the chancellor's crucial set-piece Mansion House speech to the City on Wednesday night.
The chancellor is urged to restore confidence in the financial system by making top bankers more accountable for their actions in the wake of the 2008 bank bailouts, the Libor rigging scandal, and the shoddy treatment of customers mis-sold payment protection insurance.
The senior Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, who led the commission, said the 80 or so recommendations were intended to "change banking for good". They also include giving regulators new powers to halt bonus payouts and pensions for bosses of any banks that have to be bailed out by the taxpayer in the future.
These bankers should be in jail for what they've already done. This story from The Guardian showed up on their website very shortly after midnight last night...and it's also courtesy of Roy Stephens.
In the past month bankers and lawyers from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase have streamed into a dark brick Washington office building where the future of finance is being shaped.
The high-powered visitors to the home of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission testify to its rise from an obscure US government agency to a global watchdog of financial derivatives, the scandal-hit Libor lending benchmark, and physical commodities from oil to silver.
The agency's tack is now more in question than at any time since Gary Gensler became chairman four years ago. He and one or two others on the five-member commission may be replaced as soon as July, lobbyists and commission officials say. This could slow or reverse Mr Gensler's clampdown on Wall Street banks.
I have to agree with Ted Butler on this one...Gensler and Chilton had their opportunities to make things right, but in the end the knuckled under to JPMorgan Chase and the CME Group. This Financial Times story from yesterday...and it's posted in the clear in this GATA release.
Prime Minister Erdogan used police violence to fight the youth protests, then he softened his tone before cracking down once more. But does he truly comprehend what is currently happening in his country? His own future hangs in the balance.
It didn't take much more than that to unleash Turkey's May revolts, and almost everyone had a reason to take to the streets, as the composition of the protest movement shows. It is a melting pot of conservationists and leftist Muslims, football fans and young creative types, and although it is still amorphous and disorganized as movements go, its existence alone poses a challenge to the prime minister.
And Erdogan? He sees the ghosts of his old rivals, the Kemalists, at work wherever he encounters resistance. He repeatedly derided the protesters as "radical fringe groups" and "scraps," but then he blamed the unrest on the "old elite." This reveals how little Erdogan has comprehended the social changes taking place in his country. Officials with the Kemalist party, the CHP, tried to give speeches at the demonstrations but were drowned out by whistling protesters.
This is another story from the spiegel.de Internet site yesterday...and another offering courtesy of Roy Stephens.
“We do not have any facts of the use of such weapons by the Syrian government. I assure you, that by no means all the G8 members believe that they were used,” Putin said.
The Russian President stressed he “never felt isolated” at the summit despite the difference in views, and said the G8 leaders have been seeking a common solution to the Syrian conflict.
Supplying arms to the rebels based on unconfirmed reports that chemical weapons were used by the Assad government would further destabilize Syria, Putin warned.
Putin urged Western nations not to be hasty in arming the Syrian opposition, saying that such weapons could fall into the wrong hands, or be uncontrollable.
This article was posted on the Russia Today website mid-afternoon yesterday Moscow time...and is a must read for all students of the New Great Game. Once again I thank Roy Stephens for digging this up for us.
The top-secret world the U.S. government created in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
[We] discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.
Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
This amazing...and rather short essay...was posted on the mises.org Internet site yesterday...and I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for sending it along.
The first commentary is by Rob Arnott...and it's headlined "Man Who Oversees $150 Billion Warns of Hyperinflation". The second interview is with James Turk. It's entitled "Global Markets and Banking System Face Major Collapse". And lastly is this blog with John Embry. It bears the headline "Banks Poised for Gold and Silver Turn as Central Planners Panic".
Here's commentary by Australian writer Dr. Alex Cowie...the Editor of Diggers & Drillers. It was posted on his website on Monday in North America...Tuesday 'down under'.
He feels that the results of the FOMC meeting later today [Thursday in Australia] will have a big impact on silver prices...and gold, as well, I might add.
He's probably right about that...the only thing that's not known is which way the price will move...and my bet is down, as JPMorgan pulls out all the stops to rid themselves of their remaining short position in that metal.
Time will tell...and not too much time, either. Alex's commentary was posted on the moneymorning.com.au Internet site.
In these two interviews...which run for just under 7 minutes in total...they talk about KYC [Know Your Customer]...and Hawala. Hawala...an Arabic word the means transfer...also known as hundi, is an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers, which are primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. It is basically a parallel or alternative remittance system that exists or operates outside of, and parallel to, traditional banking or financial channels.
So keep that in mind when listening to these two Bloomberg video clips which were posted on the youtube.com Internet site yesterday. I thank Mumbai reader Avinash Raheja for bringing these to our attention. The link to the first clip is here...and the second clip, here.
Palladium has posted gains year-to-day as the other precious metals have slipped, ETF Securities' Will Rhind tells The Street's Joe Deaux.
This 2:57 minute video clip was posted on theaureport.com Internet site on Monday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final contribution to today's column.
In a news release issued Wednesday, the Silver Institute observed that the medical use of silver has helped reduce the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant germs spreading through a hospital.
“Today, advances in coatings technology has enabled medical equipment producers to introduce silver-coated instruments and hospital equipment for use in treating patients—eliminating, on contract, almost every bacterial or fungal exposure,” said Michael DiRienzo, executive director of the Silver Institute.
Because silver breaks down cell walls and interferes with respiration and reproduction, bacteria have great difficulty in developing immunity to the metal, The Silver Institute noted.
“Today, the need to combat antibiotic-resistant superbugs and to suppress hospital-acquired infections has increased the importance and number of uses of silver-infused products,” the Institute observed.
This very interesting article was posted on the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and is worth reading if you have the time.
In four separate stories from yesterday's edition of the King Report...IBM to lay off 6-8,000 employees world-wide. CAT will lay off one third of its workers in Wisconsin..."With lower orders from mining customers, we must take steps to bring production in line with demand." Chrysler to freeze salaried employee's pensions in effort to limit liability..."Chrysler plans to freeze pensions for 8,000 salaried employees at the end of the year, the automaker announced Friday, joining a growing group of companies seeking to limit the amount of money they have to set aside now for future retirees." Some of Detroit's Creditors are Asked to Accept Pennies on the Dollar. "...deep cuts alone cannot save Detroit...painful sacrifices must be shared. The proposal includes an offer that amounts to less than 10 cents on the dollar on some of the city’s unfinanced debt obligations."
European Union car sales in May fell to a 20-year low as rising joblessness caused by a recession in the euro region contributed to falling demand at PSA Peugeot Citroen, Renault SA and General Motors Co.
Registrations in the 27-member EU dropped 5.9 percent to 1.04 million vehicles from 1.11 million cars a year earlier, reaching the lowest level for the month since 1993, the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, or ACEA, said today in a statement. The drop contrasts with 1.7 percent growth in April that was the first gain in the market in 19 months. Including figures from Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, sales in May fell 5.9 percent to 1.08 million cars.
“Nobody’s buying cars,” and there’s “no reason to be optimistic,” as the sales increase the previous month was because of a calendar effect, Jens Schattner, a Frankfurt-based analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd., said before the ACEA released figures. Any revival in deliveries won’t start until the end of the third quarter at the earliest, he said.
This Bloomberg story was filed from Paris early this morning Europe time...and was posted on their website at midnight last night MDT...and it's the first of two in a row from U.A.E. reader Laurent-Patrick Gally.
The Serious Fraud Office is poised to bring criminal charges against former Citigroup Inc and UBS AG trader Thomas Hayes, who is alleged to have been a central figure in a scam to rig global benchmark interest rates, a source familiar with the situation said on Monday.
The SFO was expected as soon as Tuesday to charge Hayes, following the London interbank offered rate rigging scandal, which has rocked the financial industry from the United States to Japan, the source said.
Regulators allege Hayes and others made thousands of unlawful requests to colleagues to submit false Libor rates, colluding with other banks and at least five interdealer brokers to spread false information and influence others.
This Reuters story was posted shortly after midnight in London earlier this morning...and it's the second story in a row from Laurent-Patrick Gally.
The plan makes Co-operative Bank appear much more like a bank than a mutual organisation.
An announcement between the bank and the Prudential Regulation Authority could come within the next few hours.
Under such a rescue deal, it is unlikely that taxpayer money will be required or that savers will be affected, but it could affect up to 5,000 smaller investors.
Concerns about the bank's capital arose after a deal with Lloyds collapsed.
OK...who's next? Today's first story was posted on the bbc.co.uk Internet site early Sunday evening when nobody was looking...and I thank U.K. reader Tariq Khan for sending it our way.
A top U.S. banking regulator called Deutsche Bank's capital levels "horrible" and said it is the worst on a list of global banks based on one measurement of leverage ratios.
"It's horrible, I mean they're horribly undercapitalized," said Federal Deposit Insurance Corp Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig in an interview. "They have no margin of error."
Hoenig, who is second-in-command at the regulator, said global capital rules, known as the Basel III accord, allow lenders to appear well-capitalized when they are not. That is because the rules allow the banks to use complicated measurements of how risky their loans are to determine the capital they must hold, he said.
This Reuters story was picked up by CNBC in the wee hours of Saturday morning...and I thank Laurent-Patrick Gally for bringing it to our attention.
The espionage scandal that keeps on giving has released its latest installment, once more courtesy of The Guardian, which on the eve of tomorrow's starting G-8 meeting reveals that foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G-20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored, their phone calls intercepted, and fake internet cafes were set up on the instructions of the British Government Communications Headquarters, the sister organization to the U.S. NSA.
Naturally, it wasn't just the GCHQ - according to The Guardian, during the 2009 G-20 meeting there was an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on then-Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow.
And while broad espionage allegations can be deflected by pretending by the rhetoric-endowed and teleprompter-aided that only terrorist threats were targeted, it will be very difficult to explain why the national information super spooks used every trick of the trade to spy on the so-called leaders of the developed world.
This rather explosive story made an appearance on the Zero Hedge website late Sunday evening...and I thank Matthew Nel for finding it for us.
It started badly and then got worse. To begin with President Putin and his delegation were late. Their plane into the UK was delayed and when they did finally arrive at Downing Street, they had to be taken in through the back entrance to avoid a Turkish protest taking place on Whitehall. You could imagine Putin musing that you wouldn’t see that happening in Moscow.
After the obligatory forced smiles for the camera outside Number 10, Mr Putin and David Cameron got down to business.
Except rather than the one-to-one talks that the British had been expecting earlier in the week, the Russians had decided to bring along their Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov to join the party. So a tête-à-tête became a foursome, with diplomatic protocol dictating that William Hague also be included in the talks. There was going to be no repeat for Mr Cameron of his “productive” private talks last month.
What went on in the meeting was, of course, private but what was clear to everyone at the press conference afterwards was that the Russian President was not in a happy mood. Smaller than Cameron...but stocky...Putin managed to carry off an air of menace effortlessly.
This news item showed up on the independent.co.uk Internet site on Sunday as well...and I thank U.K. reader Tariq Khan for sending it along.
Russian President Vladimir Putin faced further isolation on the second day of a G8 summit on Tuesday as world leaders lined up to pressure him into toning down his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Following an icy encounter between the Kremlin chief and U.S. President Barack Obama late on Monday, the G8 leaders will seek to find resolution to a war that has prompted powers across the Middle East to square off on sectarian lines.
The sticking point again will be Putin, who faced a barrage of criticism from Western leaders for supporting Assad and the Syrian's president's attempt to crush a 2-year-old uprising in which at least 93,000 people have been killed.
"It's a clarifying moment to see what kind of commitments the Russians are willing to make in a leading world forum," a British official said before the leaders met for dinner at a remote, heavily guarded golf course outside of Enniskillen.
Here's another prime example of the pots calling the kettle black. This Reuters piece was filed from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland early yesterday evening EDT...and it's another story courtesy of Laurent-Patrick Gally.
Turkey, South Africa and Russia have reacted angrily to the British government demanding an explanation for the revelations that their politicians and senior officials were spied on and bugged during the 2009 G20 summit in London.
The foreign ministry in Ankara said it was unacceptable that the British government had intercepted phone calls and monitored the computers of Turkey's finance minister as well as up to 15 others from his visiting delegation. If confirmed, the eavesdropping operation on a Nato ally was "scandalous", it added.
The ministry summoned the UK's ambassador to Ankara to hear Turkey's furious reaction in person. A spokesman at the foreign ministry read out an official statement saying: "The allegations in the Guardian are very worrying … If these allegations are true, this is going to be scandalous for the UK. At a time when international co-operation depends on mutual trust, respect and transparency, such behaviour by an allied country is unacceptable."
This must read article appeared on The Guardian's website late yesterday afternoon BST...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens.
The threat of imprisonment or murder will not stop the truth from coming out, Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who blew the lid on the massive National Security Agency surveillance program, told The Guardian in a live Q&A.
The 29-year-old former NSA contractor in conjunction with Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian journalist who broke the story on the NSA’s two controversial data-collection programs which targeted Americans and foreign allies alike, took questions online regarding the fallout from the massive intelligence leak.
Edward Snowden kicked off the session by describing the targeted campaign by the US government to paint him as a traitor, “just as they did with other whistleblowers." The smear campaign, he argues, has destroyed the possibility of a fair trial at home. In this regard, his decision to leave the United States was not based on any desire to evade justice, especially since he believes he can “do more good outside of prison.”
This longish news item from Russia Today is well worth reading...and it was posted on their website mid-afternoon Moscow time. I thank Roy Stephens for this story.
Syria and Egypt are dying. They were dying before the Syrian civil war broke out and before the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Cairo. Syria has an insoluble civil war and Egypt has an insoluble crisis because they are dying. They are dying because they chose not to do what China did: move the better part of a billion people from rural backwardness to a modern urban economy within a generation. Mexico would have died as well, without the option to send its rural poor - fully one-fifth of its population - to the United States.
It was obvious to anyone who troubled to examine the data that Egypt could not maintain a bottomless pit in its balance of payments, created by a 50% dependency on imported food, not to mention an energy bill fed by subsidies that consumed a quarter of the national budget. It was obvious to Israeli analysts that the Syrian regime's belated attempt to modernize its agricultural sector would create a crisis as hundreds of thousands of displaced farmers gathered in slums on the outskirts of its cities. These facts were in evidence early in 2011 when Hosni Mubarak fell and the Syrian rebellion broke out. Paul Rivlin of Israel's Moshe Dayan Center published a devastating profile of Syria's economic failure in April 2011. [1]
Sometimes countries dig themselves into a hole from which they cannot extricate themselves. Third World dictators typically keep their rural population poor, isolated and illiterate, the better to maintain control. That was the policy of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party from the 1930s, which warehoused the rural poor in Stalin-modeled collective farms called ejidos occupying most of the national territory. That was also the intent of the Arab nationalist dictatorships in Egypt and Syria. The policy worked until it didn't. In Mexico, it stopped working during the debt crisis of the early 1980s, and Mexico's poor became America's problem. In Egypt and Syria, it stopped working in 2011. There is nowhere for Egyptians and Syrians to go.
This short essay was posted on the Asia Times website yesterday...and is worth reading. It's another offering from Roy Stephens, for which I thank him.
Iran will deploy 4,000 Revolutionary Guards to Syria to bolster Damascus against a mostly Sunni-led insurgency, media reported. Meanwhile, U.S. F-16s and Patriots will stay in Jordan – speculatively, to help establish a no-fly zone to aid Syrian rebels.
The deployment of the first several-thousand strong military contingent was reported by The Independent on Sunday who quoted Iranian sources tied to the state’s security apparatus. The sources said the move signals Iran’s intention to drastically step up its efforts to preserve the government of President Bashar Assad.
The Islamic Republic’s heightened military commitment could reportedly extend to the opening up of a new “Syrian” front on the Golan Heights against Israel.
The thin edge of the war wedge in the Middle East is showing signs of growing thicker in a hurry. This Russia Today story was filed from Moscow late Sunday evening local time...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens once again.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Brazil's biggest cities, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and the capital Brasilia, on Monday evening to protest the rising cost of public transport, corruption and heavy-handed police tactics.
In the city of Belo Horizonte, police clashed with protesters and fired tear gas to disperse crowds, Brazil's Globo TV reported.
The governor of Brazil's richest and most industrialized state Sao Paulo called the protesters "troublemakers."
The demonstrations began last week after a 0.20 Brazilian real ($0.10) increase in bus fares.
This CNBC story appeared on their website early yesterday evening...and it's another contribution to today's column from Laurent-Patrick Gally.
China's shadow banking system is out of control and under mounting stress as borrowers struggle to roll over short-term debts, Fitch Ratings has warned.
The agency said the scale of credit was so extreme that the country would find it very hard to grow its way out of the excesses as in past episodes, implying tougher times ahead.
"The credit-driven growth model is clearly falling apart. This could feed into a massive over-capacity problem, and potentially into a Japanese-style deflation," said Charlene Chu, the agency's senior director in Beijing.
"There is no transparency in the shadow banking system, and systemic risk is rising. We have no idea who the borrowers are, who the lenders are, and what the quality of assets is, and this undermines signalling," she told The Daily Telegraph.
This sounds very similar to what Doug Noland was saying in his Credit Bubble Bulletin from last Friday. This particular story is an Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offering...and it was posted on The Telegraph's website on Sunday afternoon BST...and I thank Roy Stephens for bringing it to my attention...and now to yours.
1. Dr. Stephen Leeb: "Massive Demand to Send Price of Silver Skyrocketing". 2. Rick Rule: "Gold, Silver and Institutional Investors Who Are Terrified". 3. Michael Pento: "Expect Panic and Devastation as Control of Markets is Lost". 4. Robert Fitzwilson: "Fed and Other Central Planners to Enact Frightening Solutions". 5. Richard Russell: "The Great Gold Rip-Off, China, Russia and Silver". 6. The first audio interview is with Gerald Celente...and the second audio interview is with Egon von Greyerz.
With the Indian rupee plumbing new lows against the US dollar and the country’s current account deficit at record levels, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is taking the easiest route to tackle both; it has declared a war on gold. Our Chart of the Week shows the Indian current account deficit from 1970 to the end of 2012. As you can see, it has hit a record deficit level and continues to weaken. Put simply, a current account deficit occurs when a country's total imports of goods is greater than its total export of goods; this situation makes a country a net debtor to the rest of the world. India is the largest consumer of gold, almost all of which is imported and is a significant contributor to this deficit.
The RBI has drawn the battle lines and targeted gold imports as the main culprit. The central bank has announced a series of measures over the past month, including restraining lending against gold-backed assets, and restricting gold imports. The hike in gold import duty to 8% this month is the most recent announcement in this drive and doubles the duty that was applied at the beginning of this year. The RBI has asked bank trading houses not to import gold on a consignment basis for domestic sales, further insisting on 100% cash margin for letters of credit. The restrictions were invoked after imports soared to 162 tonnes in May from 142 tonnes in April on the back of weak international prices. In their campaign against gold imports the Indian finance minister P. Chidambaram has even urged banks to advise their customers not to invest in gold. “I think the Reserve Bank has advised banks that they should not sell gold coins,” said Chidambaram, while speaking at an event in Mumbai.
This very short must read commentary by David Franklin was posted on the sprottgroup.com Internet site yesterday. The chart alone is worth the trip.
There has been considerable throughput of gold in western capital markets, with substantial buying from all round the world following the April price crash. The supply can only have come from two sources: the general public, or one or more governments. It really is that simple. Two months later the gold price has only partially recovered, so physical supplies have continued to be made available. Physical demand cannot have been entirely satisfied by ETF liquidations, confirming governments are involved. This article looks at the dynamics of the gold market around this event and the implications.
While the investing public in the western nations has been generally stunned following the April price smash, demand from Asia is running at record levels.
The increase in deliveries for April and May was spectacular, totalling 460.5 tonnes, with the week ending 26 April alone seeing phenomenal deliveries of 117 tonnes. In addition, according to the Economic Times, India imported 142.5 tonnes in April and 162 tonnes in May, compared with an average monthly rate of 86 tonnes in Q1 2013. Therefore these two countries imported 765 tonnes of gold in two months, before considering any unofficial imports or their government purchases in foreign markets. The rest of Asia, from Turkey to Indonesia would certainly have stepped up their demand for gold as well, as did the western world itself for physical metal as opposed to paper entitlements.
This extensive commentary by Alasdair Macleod was posted on the goldmoney.com Internet site on Sunday...and I found it in a GATA release yesterday.
The junior resource sector is struggling financially, something most investors seem to agree on – and rightly be wary of. Here at Casey Research, we've analyzed both producers and explorers to see how profitable (or value-adding) they may be under current market conditions. The rather obvious conclusion, shared by many company executives, is that now is the time to be frugal.
Producers have started to focus on cutting costs and pulling back from development projects that have diminished prospective returns or otherwise unacceptable risk profiles.
Developers have sinned in their own way, too: as gold prices rose year after year, the price assumptions used in economic studies likewise went higher and higher. Some used assumptions that were too optimistic. And now that trend is coming back to bite them – as well as any investor who buys into those assumptions.
Naturally, when the gold price continued rising, it seemed to justify using a higher gold price when calculating how profitable a mine might be. This worked well to persuade banks to loan money and investors to buy stock, and some mines were built without enough consideration of a protracted price reversal, which has caught less prepared companies and investors off guard.
This commentary is the Monday edition of the Casey Daily Dispatch...and it was posted on the CR website yesterday afternoon.
The mainstream financial news media's propaganda campaign against gold has gotten more intense than ever even as evidence abounds that gold -- the metal, not the paper labeled "gold" -- is in greater demand than ever. That's what Jeff Nielson of Bullion Bulls Canada writes in his commentary today, "Gold-Bashing Mythology Hits New Crescendo".
This is another precious metal-related story that I found embedded in a GATA release yesterday...and I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing the introductory paragraph.
Eric Sprott, president and CEO of Sprott Asset Management, says extreme physical demand for gold and silver is draining supplies. Sprott predicts, "Somebody's going to fail here. All the data I look at says the Western central banks. . .that have been selling gold are running on fumes now...so, it's very close at hand."
This 17:51 minute audio interview with Eric was posted over at theaureport.com Internet site on Sunday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column.
A record deficit in platinum supplies is set to push prices higher, as unrest sweeps the South African mining industry and demand is boosted by the auto sector and a new exchange traded fund (ETF), according to HSBC.
Platinum, which has been influenced by the wild swings in the price of gold since April this year, hit a six-week high of $1,531 earlier this month following the "highly successful" launch of a new physically backed ETF. According to James Steel, chief precious metals analyst at HSBC, prices will rise further over the next two years, as the risk of South African mining strikes weigh on output.
But Steel also cut his price target on the metal because platinum had been influenced more than he had anticipated by the sharp swings in the price of gold.
It's interesting to see the platinum/palladium shortage story show up in the main stream press...which is the only reason I'm posting it here, as it's already yesterday's news for most precious metal investors. This CNBC story was picked up by the finance.yahoo.com Internet site yesterday...and my thanks go out to West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sharing it with us.
This 25-minute interview with Mr. Ferguson was posted on the davejanda.com Internet site on Sunday...and it's almost all about gold and silver. For that reason it's well worth your time.
In the past few days people have finally started paying attention to a funny thing going on in the market.
Time after time ahead of major news, there seems to be someone who knows something before it happens — there seem to be trades that hit too hard and fast before the news is actually made.
This has been going on for a while, and people are finally starting to understand why.
The current target of collective ire is Thomson Reuters. There was some shady trading ahead of the Consumer Confidence number at the end of last month. About a quarter of a second before the number was released, there was an eruption of orders in the SPDR S&P Sector ETF (SPY), the e-Mini (electronically traded futures), and in hundreds of stocks, according to Nanex, a market research firm.
This very interesting article was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site during the New York lunch hour on Thursday...and I thank Casey Research's own Bud Conrad for today's first story.
The monthly TIC (foreign capital flows) data gets less respect than it should. Perhaps it is because it is two months delayed, or perhaps due to the Treasury Department labyrinth one has to cross in order to figure out what is going on. Either way, for those who do follow the data set, will know by now that in April, foreign investors, official and private, sold $54.5 billion. Why is this number of note? Because it is the biggest monthly sale of Treasurys by foreigners in the history of the data series.
This Zero Hedge story from yesterday is courtesy of reader 'David in California'...and the chart is worth a quick peek.
Thanks to the Federal Reserve's massive quantitative easing program, banks have more money than they know what to do with.
So they're parking much of their cash at the Fed, where they receive a 0.25 percent interest rate. Indeed, bank deposits at the Fed have topped $1 trillion, reaching that record level in April, Fortune reports.
But while bank reserves at the Fed are soaring — up 25 percent, or $200 billion, in the first quarter alone — lending slumped during that period.
Concerns about the deposit bulge are twofold. First, money that is parked at the Fed is doing nothing to help the sluggish economy. Second, what happens to the deposits when the Fed reverses its QE?
This moneynews.com article was posted on their website early on Friday morning...and it's worth skimming. I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it.
Illinois added nearly three times more people to its food stamp program than it added in jobs over the past year – just another confirmation that the state’s economic model is failing.
Between February 2012 and February 2013, Illinois added nearly 200,000 new enrollees to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. In contrast, Illinois added only 68,400 non-farm payroll jobs during that same time period.
This disappointing news comes on top of the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics labor release that reported Illinois has the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation. At 9.3 percent, the state’s unemployment rate is significantly higher than the 7.6 percent national average.
Poor job creation is causing Illinoisans’ dependence on food stamps to rise. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that in February 2013, Illinois was the only state in the country to report a year-on-year, double-digit increase in the number of people signing up for food stamps.
This short story was posted on the illinoispolicy.org Internet site on Wednesday...and I found it in yesterday's edition of the King Report.
Japanese policymakers have really mucked things up. The Nikkei sank 6.5% Thursday and was down 1.5% for the week. Perhaps it’s a little early to pronounce the BOJ’s “shock and awe” monetary experiment a failure. The yen rallied 3.5% this week against the dollar. Against the Philippine peso its was up 4.5%, versus the South Korean won 4.1%, the Indian rupee 4.31%, the Malaysian ringgit 4.0%, the Indonesian rupiah 3.2%, the Argentine peso 3.9% and the Brazilian real 4.2%. Indonesia raised rates to support its weak currency. The yen “carry trade” (sell yen and use proceeds to buy higher-yielding instruments globally) is doling out painful losses – forcing the unwind of leveraged trades across many markets. I wouldn’t be surprised if the yen short is the largest short position in modern history. The yen bears are now running for cover – causing all kinds of havoc in the currencies and securities markets.
“Emerging” Asian markets are in the middle of an unfolding financial storm. Friday’s 2.1% gain cut the Philippine’s loss for the week to 9.2%. Even with Friday’s 4.4% recovery, the Thailand stock exchange ended the week down 3.4%. South Korea’s Kospi dropped 1.8%.
Latin America is as well caught in troubling dynamics. Brazil’s currency (real) trade to a four-year low against the dollar this week – despite currency interventions and the removal of taxes on financial flows and currency derivatives. Brazilian equities were hit for 4.4% this week, increasing y-t-d losses to 19.1%. Mexican stocks dropped 2.4%, boosting y-t-d losses to 10.2%.
Another absolute must read from Doug Noland that was posted on the prudentbear.com Internet site yesterday evening...and I thank reader U.D. for bringing it to our attention.
According to leaked NSA documents published by The Guardian last week, the United States National Security Agency is conducting dragnet surveillance of the communications of Americans, regularly receiving phone records for millions of Verizon customers while also being capable of accessing the conversations that occur over Facebook, Google and several other major Internet names through a program called PRISM. Now a 28-year-old artist and developer from Brooklyn, New York has found a fun way of warning computer users about potential government surveillance, and he’s incorporated one of the best-selling rock albums ever in the process.
Justin Blinder released a plug-in for the Web browser Firefox this week, and he’s already seeing a positive response in the press if not just based off of the idea alone. His “The Dark Side of the Prism” browser extension alerts Web surfers of possible surveillance by starting up a different song from Pink Floyd’s 1973 classic “The Dark Side of the Moon” each time a questionable site is crossed.
Blinder told the Guardian that he built the program over the course of four hours with the hopes he could "create some sort of ambient notification that you are on a site that is being surveiled by the NSA."
This Russian Today article was posted on their website early on Friday evening Moscow time...and it's courtesy of Marshall Angeles.
Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. said they received thousands of warrants for data from government entities in the U.S. during the second half of 2012.
Facebook received 9,000 to 10,000 requests, while Microsoft got 6,000 to 7,000, their legal executives said in blog posts yesterday. The companies, seeking to reassure users that authorities don’t have unfettered access to personal details, said the numbers are a “tiny fraction” of their user bases.
Google Inc., Facebook and Microsoft asked the U.S. government for more leeway this week to report aggregate numbers of data requests, following reports that the U.S. National Security Agency is collecting millions of residents’ telephone records and the Web communications of foreigners under court order. While the companies have denied giving authorities direct access to their systems, thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing businesses are swapping intelligence with security agencies, four people familiar with the process said.
This Bloomberg item was posted on their website very late last night...and I thank U.A.E. reader Laurent-Patrick Gally for sliding it into my inbox at 5:01 a.m. EDT this morning.
U.S. troops will soon leave Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is in shambles. What reason is there for Congress to abdicate responsibility for declaring war?
Last month, I argued that the time has come for Congress to repeal, or "sunset," its sweeping "Authorization for Use of Military Force" (AUMF) enacted just three days after the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001. The legislative "blank check" given to the executive branch to wage the War on Terrorism -- a measure enacted while fires at the World Trade Center and Pentagon were still smoldering -- has been, as diplomats used to say, "overtaken by events."
This morning, 4,288 days after the AUMF was enacted, Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, introduced legislation in Congress to sunset the measure on December 31, 2014, a date chosen to coincide with the withdrawal of American combat troops from Afghanistan. The proposal is a serious bit of business and warrants timely and serious consideration on Capitol Hill.
This is a must read for all serious students of the New Great Game. It was posted in The Atlantic on Monday...and I've been saving it for today. My thanks to Elliot Simon for digging it up for us.
Iceland's bid to join the EU is over, the country's foreign minister told the European Commission on Thursday (13 June).
"This is how democracy works," said Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson, on his first overseas trip, three weeks after being appointed to the recently elected Icelandic government.
He pointed out that both parties in the new government had campaigned against EU accession.
He commented that the main purpose of the trip had been "to tell the commission that the new government has made decision to put negotiations on hold.
This story was posted on the euobserver.com Internet site early yesterday morning...and it's Roy Stephens' first offering in today's column.
The United States may have administered one of the biggest-ever snubs to the Kremlin in the post-Cold War era with the White House announcement on Thursday that it will provide military support to the Syrian rebels.
The U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit scheduled to begin in Northern Ireland this coming Monday. This was to have been the first meeting for the two presidents after their respective re-election to the high office.
As a token courtesy to Putin at a personal and public level, Obama should have deferred the announcement until after meeting Putin. Syria was expected to figure on top of their agenda and Obama and Putin have been closely in touch over Syria.
Geneva 2, the proposed conference on Syria, is a joint Russian-American initiative. By delaying the announcement to next week, the US wouldn't have "lost" Syria. Quite obviously, Obama has made a cool assessment that Putin's friendship is expendable. After all, the discord over missile defense sticks out like a sore thumb in the US-Russia relations and there is no remedy in view.
This, too, is a must read for all students of the New Great Game. It was posted on the Asia Times website yesterday...and it's Roy Stephens' second contribution in a row to today's column.
The ‘red line’ drawn by the U.S. over chemical weapons usage is a standard not applied to Syrian rebels, despite the same ‘red line’ being used for the Syrian government, Abayomi Azikwe, editor of the pan-African news wire, tells RT.
The U.S. is conveniently ignoring accusations that the Syrian rebels themselves might have engaged in crimes against humanity, while throwing blame at Syria for unproven chemical weapon use to justify further military, political and diplomatic pressure against the Syrian government.
This is also required reading for all students of the New Great Game...and it was posted on the Russia Today website early yesterday afternoon Moscow time. It's another offering from Roy Stephens.
Singapore’s monetary authority censured banks for trying to rig benchmark interest rates and ordered them to set aside as much as S$12 billion ($9.6 billion) at zero interest pending steps to improve internal controls.
ING Groep NV, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and UBS AG were among 20 banks at which 133 traders tried to manipulate the Singapore interbank offered rate, swap offered rates and currency benchmarks in the city-state, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a statement yesterday. The regulator said it will also make rigging key rates a criminal offense and bring supervision under its direct oversight.
Singapore, seeking to bolster its reputation as a major financial hub, is cracking down amid a widening global review of benchmarks. Bloomberg News reported this week traders manipulated key foreign-exchange rates in the $4.7 trillion-a-day currency market. Barclays Plc, UBS and RBS have been fined $2.5 billion over the past year for rigging Libor.
Well, Singapore's monetary authorities mean what they say...and if the banks are real smart they'll toe the line. This Bloomberg story, filed from Singapore, was posted on their website early yesterday afternoon MDT...and I thank Marshall Angeles for his second contribution to today's column.
China appears increasingly worried that monetary tightening by the US Federal Reserve could trigger capital flight from the People’s Republic and set off a Chinese corporate debt crisis.
A front-page editorial on Friday in China Securities Journal - an arm of the regulatory authorities - warned that capital inflows have slowed sharply and may have begun to reverse as investors grow wary of emerging markets. “China will face large-scale capital outflows if there is an exit from quantitative easing and the dollar strengthens.” it wrote.
The journal said foreign exodus from Chinese equity funds were the highest since early 2008 in the week up to June 5, and the withdrawal Hong Kong funds were the most in a decade.
It also warned that total credit in Chinese financial system may have reached 221pc of GDP, jumping almost eightfold over the last decade. Companies will have to fork out $1 trillion in interest payments alone this year. “Chinese corporate debt burdens are much higher than those of other economies and much of the liquidity is being used to repay debt and not to finance output,” it said.
This absolute must read by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site early yesterday afternoon BST...and it's Roy's final offering in today's column.
What do yield-hungry Japanese investors have in common with unicorns and Bigfoot?
Like the latter two, supposed Japanese buyers of U.S. equities and myriad other instruments have been talked and written about to excess, but have yet to materialize. They were supposed to arrive after the Bank of Japan in April moved to aggressively step up its stimulus efforts. The shocking efforts aimed at boosting assets and stoking inflation would leave Japan’s return-starved investors little choice but to set out on a “scavenger hunt for yield,” or so the argument went.
Or not. Data released by Japan’s Ministry of Finance earlier Thursday showed that Japanese investors were net sellers of foreign securities for a fourth consecutive week. In the period running from June 2 to June 8, Japanese investors sold a net 386.9 billion yen ($4.1 billion) of foreign bonds and notes and a net 221.8 billion yen of foreign equities in the week ending June 8, the ministry said.
This marketwatch.com article is another must read story. It...and the Ambrose Evans-Pritchard piece before it...are all the more reason that you should spend the necessary time reading Doug Noland's commentary posted further up in the Critical Reads section. This MarketWatch article was posted on their website very early on Thursday afternoon EDT...and I found it embedded in yesterday's edition of the King Report.
1. Egon von Greyerz [#1]: "Silver is Coiling For a Major Upside Explosion in Price". 2. Citi analyst Tom Fitzpatrick: "Stocks to Plunge as World Enters Massive Bank Panic". 3. Egon von Greyerz [#2]: "Financial Chaos, Disappearing Freedom and Hyperinflation".
France's government has banned sending currency by mail — including coins, cash and all forms of precious metals.
BullionStreet notes that the legislation, which was approved May 23, was not announced by the government at the time and has been little reported on by media outlets.
Published via Legifrance, the law states: “the insertion of banknotes, coins and precious metals is prohibited in mailings, including the insured items, registered items and items subject to formalities certifying deposition and distribution.”
This story has been around the Internet for a week or so now, so it's not really new...but I wanted to see it posted on a more well-known Internet site before I was going to post it in this space. This version of it appeared on the mining.com Internet site yesterday...and it's courtesy of Marshall Angeles.
Sometimes one must see to believe, in this case believe just how massive the raw demand for the shiny, barbarous relic is in China during times of relative monetary stability (in this case the Dragon Boat Festival). Now assume runaway inflation as we saw in 2011 China, which may be unleashed by something as catalytic as the PBOC once again deciding to inject liquidity in its suffocating banking system and to revive growth in the stalling economy.
June 11th, ten thousand people line up in front of a gold shop to buy gold. The buyers lined up during the three day Dragon Boat Festival.
Well, dear reader, here's a story that was posted on the Zero Hedge website yesterday...and I admit that I have my suspicions about it. It's either a wild exaggeration, or patently false. Several readers sent me this article yesterday...and even though there's a link to the original news item [in Chinese] embedded at the end of this ZH posting, I'm not quite buying it. I've never seen 10,000 people [which seems like a gross exaggeration] lined up to buy anything. You can read it for yourself...and make up your own mind. Matthew Nel talked me into posting it, so you can blame him... 
))
Roosevelt had only been in office for 101 days and while there was broad bipartisan support for inflationary policies in Congress, it’s safe to say that most of those who voted for FDR never expected him to confiscate private holdings of gold coins, bullion, and certificates.
Roosevelt called the measure a temporary one (it wasn’t), and he followed it up by invalidating gold clauses in private contracts that obligated payment in gold dollars, which had the effect of devaluing the assets of bond and contract holders. Many of these hoarders and slackers purchased gold as a hedge against the (Fed-fueled) inflationary boom of the 1920s and then hung on to it during the Hoover years when his crazed and unprecedented interventions in wages and prices caused a normal market correction to devolve into a depression. Why would they trust Roosevelt any more?
They were smart not to. By January 1934, Roosevelt increased the dollar price of gold from $20.67 to $35, thus devaluing the dollar by 70 percent while increasing the value of gold that the government now owned.
This Zero Hedge piece from yesterday is well worth your time...and I thank Elliot Simon for his last story of the day.
Félix Moreno talks to David Morgan, publisher of The Morgan Report and the proprietor of silver-investor.com. They discuss the bond bubble and the coming collapse of fiat money, the difference between “paper gold” and physical precious metals, fractional reserve in gold markets, the price of gold and silver and why gold is not just another commodity, but rather a monetary metal. They also talk about central bank gold reserves – particularly those of Germany and China.
This 24-minute podcast was recorded on 13 June, 2013...and I found it in a GATA release from yesterday.
A rare, century–old silver certificate bearing the likeness of 19th century politician William L. Marcy was sold to an anonymous buyer for that lofty sum, which auctioneers at Stack's Bowers Galleries say is a record.
"Only two exist of this type, the other being a treasure in the National Numismatic Collection in the Smithsonian Institution," Stack's Bowers said in announcing the sale.
The certificate was issued in 1891, at a time when silver miners, Western mining companies and some Western banks were objecting to the government's decision to adopt a gold standard.
William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech...and the Frank Baum's book "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" popped into my head the moment I read this short, but very interesting news item. It, and some of the embedded links, are well worth your time...and I thank reader Bill Moomau for today's last story.
